uRacer: The King Of The Drift
Version: 0.9.4 Web: https://github.com/manuelbua/uracer-kotd
Let’s go drifting instead of fighting. This attractive top-down game is a nice candidate for those who like racing and good-looking graphics in open source games for Linux. uRacer: The King Of the Drift offers drifting as a main element of the game’s mechanics. At first sight, uRacer has much in common with Dust Racing 2D (LXF200), which has a top-down view too, but then the game comes into its own. It features very impressive and high-quality graphics. uRacer is dependent on your video chip’s performance and can sometimes lag on low-end hardware, but it shines with a decent standalone graphics card. The car, the track and the scenery look very slick, and the game is seen through an old CRT filter effect complete with scanlines, coupled with ambient occlusion. The controls are quite unusual, though. In addition to the arrow keys, you can control the car using your mouse. The pointer position sets the direction, whereas left click accelerates the car. So, you need to click and hold the left mouse button and then try not to miss the turn. The car is a beast to control and you have very little time to react on turns. Obviously, an untrained uRacer gamer has few chances to keep the car on track and not hit the roadside barriers, but it’s never a problem. The car is immune to damage so you have unlimited freedom to race the track safely. Each barrier hit is indicated by an intensive ‘solar wind’-like effect, which is worth seeing by itself.
We had a great time exploring each of uRacer’s six tracks, where it’s possible to compete with a ‘ghost’ of your best time. It took a little while, but in the end it resulted in developing the required skills, comparable to those you’d get after playing Neverball for a while. Passing U-turns using your drifting skills feels very rewarding, even when viewed from above.